A chronicle of Issues, Studies, News and other items of interest regarding Mormonism (2006-2013)

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Joyous day' didn't erase racist folklore

Joyous day' didn't erase racist folkloreBy Peggy Fletcher StackThe Salt Lake TribuneSalt Lake TribuneMany people predicted racist Mormons would abandon their church enmasse when it opened its priesthood to blacks in June 1978. Didn'thappen. "It was a joyous day for every member of the church - black, white,it doesn't matter the color," Merrill Bateman of the LDS First Quorumof Seventy said on the 25th anniversary of lifting the ban. The change brought relief to many white Mormons who were mortifiedby charges of racism leveled at them and The Church of Jesus Christ ofLatter-day Saints. And it brought a string of firsts: First blackpriest ordained in Utah. First black missionary. First black bishop.First black couple married in the temple. First black men ordained inLos Angeles, Rio, Jamaica, Nigeria. First black general authority. The most dramatic changes occurred in predominantly black countriesformerly off limits to Mormon missionaries. Today there are more than200,000 Latter-day Saints in Africa alone. Underneath the euphoria, though, lurks a continuing race problem. "It's not the same kind of racism it was 40 years ago," says DarronSmith, an outspoken LDS black member. "Now it's happy-face racism -denial that there's a problem and shoot the messenger." Smith worked until recently as an adjunct professor at LDSChurch-owned Brigham Young University and as a diversity counselor.Last month his contract was not renewed, he says, and he was told itwas because of his constant raising of this issue with the media andin public forums. But Smith, co-editor of an anthology, Black and Mormon, won't be silence=d. "I have remained faithful to the church, but that doesn't seem tocount for much," Smith says in a phone interview. "They vilify me." He and others have tried to get the LDS Church to repudiate whatthey see as racist folklore once used to defend the ban: The idea thatblacks descended from Cain, the biblical figure who murdered hisbrother, or that blacks couldn't choose between God and Satan in thepre-Earth life, making them "fence-sitters in heaven." "These ideas, though never based in revelation or canonicalsources, were authoritatively taught by LDS leaders as late as the1980s," says Armand Mauss, professor emeritus of sociology atWashington State University and author of All Abraham's Children:Changing Mormon Conceptions of Lineage and Race. Such notions never have been rejected officially or publicly, sothey continue to circulate in the LDS grapevine, Mauss says,especially in Utah, where the largely white population has littleexperience with African-Americans. To counter the perceived racism, the LDS Church has taken steps toshow its openness to people of color. In recent years, the church has supported, and even sponsored,various commemorations of black Mormon pioneers and has sponsoredcelebrations of Black History Month in well-publicized conferences andworkshops in Salt Lake City, Southern California and Washington, D.C.For several years, the church has been promoting family history andgenealogy for black people, starting with the Freedman's Bank project,which computerized and made publicly available family records ofslaves. It has built large new churches in inner-city Harlem andPhiladelphia. Its official position on the ban is that only God knows the reasonit took so long to eliminate. That would be fine, Mauss says, if people would leave it at that.But they don't. So he and Smith favor an official statement againstthe folklore. "I know that some of the [LDS apostles] would like to see such astatement issued, but I don't know how many of them," he says."President [Gordon B.] Hinckley clearly believes that it is notnecessary, for the 1978 revelation and policy change 'speaks foritself,' as he has said." Mauss doesn't expect such a statement as long as Hinckley lives,"even though his administration has been otherwise very sincere in itsoutreach to black people." Smith is less patient. "Racist folklore will remain in the church until LDS officialspublicly repudiate it from the pulpit - at stake conferences, wardconferences and General Conference," he says. "All of us need to askquestions, not just blacks. It's only when the white boy asks theright questions that progressive things will happen for the church. Wedon't need any more white liberals, we need white radicals." pstack@sltrib.com